Yevgeny Sudbin – Scriabin (2007) SACD ISO

Yevgeny Sudbin – Scriabin (2007)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 57:23 minutes | 2.58 GB
Genre: Classical | Publisher (label): BIS Records – BIS-SACD-1568

Writing in prose as delirious as his playing, Yevgeny Sudbin speaks in his accompanying nine-page essay of the incomprehension that greeted Scriabin’s half-crazed genius in both Russia and the West. I should add that America, too, was similarly baffled, reminding us that there are those who think “that the air is filled with green monkeys with crimson eyes and sparkling tails, a kind of ecstasy that is sold in Russia at two roubles a bottle”. This is entirely apt and, laying my cards firmly on the table, I should say that no pianist of any generation has, in my experience, captured Scriabin’s volatility so vividly as Sudbin.

In his choice of sonatas (ranging through Scriabin’s early, middle and late periods), his mix of drama and introspection are positively alchemic and entirely his own. It is as if the music’s very nerve ends are exposed to view and rarely have I heard a pianist prepared to take such risks on record. He takes virtuosity to the very edge at the end of the Fifth Sonata and his daredevil aplomb is at its height in the Ninth, suitably named Black Mass Sonata.

How he varies the colour, light and shade in the early D sharp minor Etude so that its familiar heroic octaves sound newly minted and never merely frenetic! His selection of Mazurkas is given with a breathtaking subtlety, making you long to hear him in Chopin, while his response to Scriabin’s command in the Fifth Sonata, presto tumultuoso esaltato, is like the vortex of a whirlwind.

All these performances are flecked with personal touches and brilliances above and beyond even Scriabin’s wildest demands.Finally, BIS captures Sudbin’s astonishing range of colours and sonorities, ranging from the utmost delicacy to an enraged uproar, in crystalline demonstration sound. This, put suitably euphorically, is a disc in a million.

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Yevgeny Sudbin – Sudbin plays Scriabin (2007) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Yevgeny Sudbin – Sudbin plays Scriabin (2007)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 57:23 minutes | 454 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Treated to Yevgeny Sudbin’s excellent recordings of music by Domenico Scarlatti, Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, and Sergey Rachmaninov, fans of the brilliant Russian virtuoso can expect similarly high levels of energy and refinement in his exciting performances of piano pieces by Alexander Scriabin. The three sonatas and nine shorter works on this 2007 BIS release may make this album seem a bit like a synopsis of the composer’s output, since all his styles are represented, and his characteristic expressions – from the early, Chopin-esque flavor of the etudes to the late mysticism evinced in the Sonata No. 9, “Black Mass” – are clearly laid out. Sudbin demonstrates both concentrated control and wild explosiveness in these performances, depending on which is needed most in the music at any given time, and the agility and alacrity that he displays in switching between these extremes show his deep understanding of Scriabin’s ethos, which embraces both delicate purity and diabolical frenzy. These contradictory aspects meet almost perfectly in the Sonata No. 5 (sometimes nicknamed “Poem of Ecstasy”), which Sudbin delivers with an ideal balance of diaphanous chasteness and rampant lustiness; this performance is the highlight of the disc. The reproduction on this hybrid SACD is phenomenally clear and comfortably close, so the rich textures and vibrant colors in Sudbin’s playing come across with marvelous resonance and multidimensional depth. – Review by Blair Sanderson

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Yevgeny Sudbin and Bella Sudbin – Romeo & Juliet: Tchaikovsky on the Piano (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Yevgeny Sudbin and Bella Sudbin – Romeo & Juliet: Tchaikovsky on the Piano (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:58 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

In his liner notes, Yevgeny Sudbin remembers falling in love with Tchaikovsky’s music when he was introduced to classical music. On this album, the pianist presents a collection of piano pieces and arrangements for piano, solo and four hands, of orchestral works by the great Russian composer, preceding it with a curtain raiser much-loved by Tchaikovsky himself: Mikhail Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Ludmila. The piano pieces selected by Sudbin spans some twenty years of Tchaikovsky’s career and takes in the ever-popular Barcarolle (June) and Troika (November) from The Seasons as well as three pieces from the composer’s last work for piano, the 18 Pieces, Op. 72. To these are added two waltzes from The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, here performed in four-hand piano arrangements with Sudbin’s 12-year-old daughter Bella playing the ‘primo’ part.

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Yevgeny Sudbin, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos 2 & 3 (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Yevgeny Sudbin, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo – Rachmaninoff Piano Concertos 2 & 3 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:15:12 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Oh no, it’s not the program of this album that’s any kind of news – after all, Rachmaninov’s Second and Third piano concertos have been recorded over and over again by dozen pianists since their very composition – but the interpretation of Russian pianist Yevgeny Sudbin, born in 1980 in Saint-Petersburg. Hailed by “The Daily Telegraph” as ‘potentially one of the greatest pianists of the 21st century’, Yevgeny Sudbin released his first album on BIS in 2005. Since then his recordings have met with critical acclaim and have been regularly featured as “CD of the Month” by the highly choosy BBC Music Magazine or “Editor’s Choice” by the none less choosy Gramophone. Sudbin performs regularly in prestigious venues such as London’s Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Avery Fisher Hall in New York. Recent engagements have included performances with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Leipzig, and Philharmonia Orchestra. His love of chamber music has resulted in partnerships with musicians including Hilary Hahn, Julia Fischer and the Chilingirian Quartet among others. Appearances at festivals include Aspen, La Roque d’Anthéron, Mostly Mozart and Verbier. In 2016 he was nominated Artist of the Year at the prestigious Gramophone Classical Music Awards.

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Yevgeny Sudbin, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Lan Shui – Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54, Prometheus, Op. 60 & Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Yevgeny Sudbin, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Lan Shui – Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54, Prometheus, Op. 60 & Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:52 minutes | 919 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

One of the boldest and most radical composers of all time, Alexander Scriabin had a lifelong obsession with occult and mystical ideas. Initially under the influence of Chopin, Wagner and Liszt, his music later became more complex, taking on an expressive power which provoked extreme reactions from audiences – of adulation as well as repulsion. Not shying away from hyperbole, Scriabin once declared: “I am the apotheosis of creation – I am the aim of all aims – I am the end of all ends”.

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Vadim Gluzman, Johannes Moser & Yevgeny Sudbin – Tchaikovsky, Schnittke & Babajanian: Works for Piano Trio (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Vadim Gluzman, Johannes Moser & Yevgeny Sudbin – Tchaikovsky, Schnittke & Babajanian: Works for Piano Trio (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:21 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

In Russia, the piano trio is the most prestigious format for the musical homage. It lends a work an elegiac character, which is often made clear in the movement’s title or indications. The Trio in A Minor, Op. 50 pours itself out in a generous Pezzo elegiaco, a passionate meeting of cello and violin. There follow a succession of deliciously inventive variations on a folk theme, appearing one after another like so many matrioshkas. The performers (Vadim Gluzman on violin, Johannes Moser on cello and Yevgeny Sudbin on piano) are at home with this music, which they play with a hot intensity. In the fifth variation, the piano finds sounds which we love, with a sober accompaniment of sustained pedal notes on strings. The musicians dig a little further into this deliciously nostalgic mood with the Trio in F Sharp Minor by Arno Babadjanian. This latter moulds the sound with magnificent grandiloquence. Its lyricism, with folk accents, speaks in a Romantic language, in a taut harmonic environment. We’re holding our breath up until Tango by Alfred Schnittke, arranged for the occasion of this recording for the label Bis by Yevgeny Sudbin. Here, the nostalgia reaches its zenith. But the performers can’t weaken on this piece that demands musicians be at once supple – it is a dance, after all – and robust. And these are qualities shared by all these artists, including Vadim Gluzman, with a charm worthy of David Oïstrakh, the first performer of the Babadjanian’s Trio. – Elsa Siffert

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Yevgeny Sudbin – Yevgeny Sudbin plays Haydn (2010) MCH SACD ISO + DSF DSD64 + Hi-Res FLAC

Yevgeny Sudbin – Yevgeny Sudbin plays Haydn (2010)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 75:11 minutes | PDF Booklet | 3,43 GB
or DSD64 2.0 Stereo (from SACD-ISO to Tracks.dsf) > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | F/B+ PDF Booklet | 2,98 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (carefully converted & encoded to tracks) 24bit/48 kHz | PDF Booklet | 646 MB
Features Stereo and Multichannel Surround Sound | DSD Recording | BIS Records AB # BIS-SACD-1788

The young Russo-British pianist Yevgeny Sudbin has inspired wildly varying reactions from critics and listeners, and he may be one of those artists whom you simply like or not. His technical skills are unquestioned, and he gets your attention with unusual gestures early on and coherently follows through on them. This collection of Haydn sonatas and other keyboard works, all pretty often played except for the Fantasia in C major, Hob. 17/4, certainly stands out from the crowd.

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Yevgeny Sudbin – Liszt: Funérailles – 3 Sonetti del Petrarca – Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre – Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Yevgeny Sudbin – Liszt: Funérailles – 3 Sonetti del Petrarca – Saint-Saëns: Danse macabre – Ravel: Gaspard de la nuit (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:46 minutes | 940 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

Here is a program of unapologetically exhibitionist works for solo piano, performed by an artist who has absolutely no reason to be apologetic for his virtuosic showmanship. In reviewing repertoire Yevgeny Sudbin has previously recorded, I’ve not been overwhelmed by this not-so-young-anymore (he’s 33 now) Russian keyboard dynamo. Technically, he’s brilliant, but then so is just about every other young pianist fresh from the conservatory or the competition circuit. What bothered me about Sudbin’s Chopin recital, reviewed in 35:5, was a certain coldness or aloofness in his playing.

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Yevgeny Sudbin – Beethoven: Sonatas Op. 110 & 111 (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Yevgeny Sudbin – Beethoven: Sonatas Op. 110 & 111 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:53 minutes | 961 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

Yevgeny Sudbin has previously recorded Beethoven’s piano concertos – releases which have received international acclaim, for instance on the website ClassicsToday.com: ‘A Beethoven experience you will not want to miss.’ For his first disc featuring solo works by Beethoven, Sudbin has chosen the two final sonatas and the Six Bagatelles, Op. 126 – late works written between 1821 and 1824, just a couple of years before the composer’s death. There are numerous anecdotes that testify to the fact that Beethoven was highly temperamental. But in his liner notes to this disc, Sudbin writes of another, contrasting side to the composer: ‘warmth, generosity and wisdom – with unexpected outbursts of cheeky humour – are also unmistakably among Beethoven’s qualities and particularly evident in the works on this recording’.

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Yevgeny Sudbin, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Osmo Vänskä – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2 (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Yevgeny Sudbin, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Osmo Vänskä – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:18 minutes | 996 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS

On two previous discs, Yevgeny Sudbin and Osmo Vänskä have released Beethoven’s three last piano concertos to critical acclaim. Distinctions include Editor’s Choice in Gramophone and top marks from the Italian magazine Musica and the German website Klassik-Heute.de, and performances have been described as ‘electrifying’ (classicfm.com), ‘absolutely stunning’ (Fanfare) and ‘a Beethoven experience you will not want to miss’ (ClassicsToday.com). For the final disc in their cycle, Sudbin and Vänskä have travelled to Helsinki to team up with Tapiola Sinfonietta, one of the top Nordic ensembles, and well suited for these earlier and more classical of Beethoven’s concertos. Of the two, the one we now know as the Second was actually begun several years before Concerto No. 1, and indeed even before Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna. During the following decade, Beethoven returned to the score repeatedly and made substantial revisions – including composing a new final movement – and ultimately the C major concerto reached publication first. Both concertos were conceived long before Beethoven’s involvement with the symphonic genre, and the influence of Mozart and Haydn is evident in the interaction between the orchestra and the soloist – but Beethoven’s individual spirit is nevertheless unmistakeable.

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Yevgeny Sudbin plays Medtner & Rachmaninov (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Yevgeny Sudbin plays Medtner & Rachmaninov (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 60:00 minutes | 783 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | © BIS Records
Recorded: February & June 2009, April 2012, July, October & November 2014 at St George’s Bristol, England

Having previously released recordings of Medtner’s three piano concertos as well as three of Rachmaninov’s five concertante works, Yevgeny Sudbin on the present disc combines solo pieces by the two friends and fellow-composers. From Sergei Rachmaninov’s rich and varied production he has chosen six of the celebrated preludes, including the celebrated ‘Alla marcia’ in G minor (Op.23 No.5) as well as the much-loved Prelude No.12 in G sharp minor from the Op.32 set. But Sudbin, who is a great admirer of Nikolai Medtner, opens his new disc with a generous selection of that composer’s solo piano music. This section begins with the Prologue from Stimmungsbilder, the eighteen-year-old composer’s Opus 1, and closes with Sonata tragica, composed shortly before Medtner left Russia in 1921, never to return. It also includes three of the thirty-some Fairy Tales that Medtner composed throughout his life. ‘No one tells such tales as Kolya’, Rachmaninov used to joke affectionately, and with these pieces Medtner created his own, unique genre. He himself used the Russian word skazka or German Märchen to describe them, and in his liner notes Yevgeny Sudbin suggests that the creative impulse came not only from folklore but also from such diverse sources as Pushkin, Shakespeare and even the Bible. As an interpreter of both these composers, Sudbin has proven himself both in concert and on disc, with previous recordings being named Disc of the Month in Gramophone, ‘Essential Recording’ in BBC Music Magazine and ’10/10′ on ClassicsToday.com, to mention just a few of the distinctions awarded them.

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Domenico Scarlatti – 18 Keyboard Sonatas – Yevgeny Sudbin (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Domenico Scarlatti – 18 Keyboard Sonatas – Yevgeny Sudbin (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:30 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | © BIS Records
Recorded: July 2014 (K 9, 141, 159, 213), February 2015 (K 12, 29, 32, 69, 99, 119, 125, 417) and July 2015 (K 56, 208, 318, 373, 425, 479) at St George’s Bristol, England

With the 2005 release of his first recording for BIS Records, Yevgeny Sudbin catapulted into the pages of the international music press. The disc was a Scarlatti recital that prompted reviewers worldwide to compare the then 24-year old pianist in the most flattering terms to Scarlatti experts such as Horowitz and Pletnev. It went on to receive a long list of distinctions, including an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, where the accompanying review described it as ‘among the finest, certainly most enjoyable of all Scarlatti recitals’. Since then, Sudbin and BIS have enjoyed a highly successful collaboration, resulting in numerous acclaimed recordings of both solo programmes and concertos. To celebrate the past 10 years, a new Scarlatti recording seemed the obvious choice for an anniversary present – to ourselves, and of course to all Sudbin fans and Scarlatti lovers. Said and done: Sudbin met up with Marion Schwebel, the recording producer with whom he has collaborated from the very beginning, for recording sessions in the silken acoustics of St George’s in Bristol. The results can be heard on this new disc: 18 sonatas selected from the total of 555 – a collection of a striking, even bewildering, variety. Through it all, Sudbin guides us with authority but also obvious relish as he brings to life elements which his own liner notes describes as ‘church bells and gunshots (K119), howls in the streets (K479), trumpets appearing on the horizon (K159), head-spinning dances (K425) but also a wonderful sense of humour (K125) – as well scenes as melancholic, lean and desiccated as a sun-baked Mediterranean landscape (K99).

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